Costume College 2014

Costume College is a convention where you spend your days taking costuming and crafting classes and then in the evening everyone gets dressed up in fabulous costumes! (Some people wear multiple costumes a day.) It’s mostly historical costuming but fantasy and other genres are welcome as well.

My favorite class this year was Candace Kling‘s cabochon roses class. We made flowers out of ribbons, rick rack and bias-cut silk. If you’re curious to make your own flowers, try her awesome Artful Ribbon book. Below are some of the flowers I made in the class.

My new costume this year was Belle from Jean Cocteau’s 1946 black and white film, La Belle et la Bete (Beauty and the Beast). Alyxx was my lovely beast! I’ve loved this film for a long time so it was really wonderful to finally make these costumes!

I also got to take photos with my friend Judy’s amazing Ursula costume from The Little Mermaid.

Borrowing Judy’s tentacles!

Here are some more photos of people’s beautiful costumes from around the convention.

A beautiful Game of Thrones inspired gown.

Friday at the Ice Cream Social a lot of people wore Game of Thrones (or inspired by Game of Thrones) costumes! I wore my Daenerys dark blue Astaphor dress.

Yay, Doctor Who X Historical costuming!

Rococo Punk!

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11 Comments

mary tegtmeyer

Aimee, my son and I saw you dressed as Ariel when we came in for a visit to the public costume exhibit and the marketplace. He instantly recognized you (as Ariel) and he asked if your hair was real – so cute.
We enjoyed seeing you from afar!
Thank you for posting such great photos too, I had forgot my camera.

Angela Burnley

Marie-Jo Dulade-Coclet

Thank you for posting some of your pictures. I too love the Cocteau film and the two of you in “La Belle et la Bête” were the most fascinating, creative and stunning interpretations and costume creations this year – not forgetting the outstanding makeup and wig Alyxx made for her character. Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais would have loved the two of you. I got to meet them and see Jean Marais many times on stage – and they always appreciated very creative designs.

You can do some things with bias-cut silk (i.e. you cut the strips yourselves) as well as rick-rack. But polyester ribbon would work fine as any cut edge is hidden at the bottom of the flower. I like ombre offray ribbon and I’m pretty sure that’s all poly. You can also search for Hanah silk ribbons or YLI silk ribbon online.